(ambient music) - It's like a family reunion, kind of.

- All my grandchildren have children.

- There's a feeling in the neighborhood that it's coming.

Her day, that Freedom Day.

Every year she tells the story.

- I am JoAnna LeNoir.

My entire family, my mother, my brother, my two sisters, and my oldest daughter moved to Indianapolis.

- [Narrator] Since 1964, JoAnna has celebrated her family's escape from hell.

(somber orchestral music) - We called it Rasheeda's Freedom Day because my mother was set free.

- [Narrator] Rasheeda's Freedom Day caught the attention of the Harrison Center, Sparkling Studios, and filmmaker Dija Henry.

(melancholy orchestral music) - It's just so powerful what stories can do for people.

That's really what pushes me to make film.

- [Narrator] Rasheeda was a mother of four in the '60s, struggling to get by in St. Louis.

- She'll be better off at the neighbor's.

- [Narrator] Her second husband, - [Rasheeda] No!

- [Narrator] an abusive alcoholic.

- He was just evil and ignorant.

By the time I was 14, I just absolutely hated him.

- [Narrator] JoAnna, the oldest of Rasheeda's three children wanted a new life for her mother and siblings.

- My brother and sister, at that time did not know what was going on.

- [Narrator] She had seen her stepfather physically abuse her mother.

- [Child's voice] He had come into our lives when I was younger than Sheila.

I don't remember where my mother met him.

I remember that he'd been a soldier.

- She was beautiful.

I think my mother was just young and didn't know what she was looking for or how to find what she needed.

(Rasheeda crying) She was just bullied into everything and I don't think she knew how to fight back.

- [Narrator] Soon things would get worse.

JoAnna would be raising her own child at the age of 15.

The emotional, physical, and later sexual abuse had taken its toll and JoAnna had decided it was going to be over one way or another.

- They sent me to live with a neighbor for a little bit after my baby was born.

The weekend that my mother brought me back home and my mother's husband had been drinking, and I could see, I could just see what was coming.

- Glad you're back.

- I called my mother on her job and I told her that if she didn't come home and leave right away, that I was gonna kill her husband.

I just wasn't gonna take anymore.

I meant every word that I said, and we took off.

- [Narrator] They fled by bus to Indianapolis with what they could carry and they've been here ever since.

- Came right to that house right there.

That night we all sat out there on the porch and we cried for a few minutes and we talked about, you know, what all we done left and all the things we left.

And Mama came out and said, "But now all you gotta do now is look to the future to see what you have because you don't never have to worry about being misused again."

- [Narrator] Columbia Avenue in Martindale-Brightwood seemed like paradise.

- The following day, my brother went over there to Fall Creek, came back and said, "Y'all, come on, I done found us a lake."

(laughing) - Almost everybody on that block had children.

Adults played hide and seek with us.

And, you know, it was just, it was just fun.

- [Narrator] Neighbors soon became family.

- How you doing, Beautiful?

- I'm wonderful, how you doing?

- All right.

- [Narrator] And the very next summer the first Rasheeda's Freedom Day happened.

- We had the first one, the 14th of July, a year after we came.

- [Narrator] Rasheeda later married a man that knew how to love her and all of her children.

- She had met another man and he was the one of the kindest people I've ever met.

And he was very good to her and he loved her very much and he showed it.

He showed us, her children, that he loved her.

- Ah, it's a pleasure to meet you.

- [Narrator] Today, Rasheeda's Freedom Day continues to grow.

- If you don't belong to the family, you would feel a part of the family.

- We've been getting phone calls all morning.

"Well, what you need, what we gotta bring?

What you gotta do?"

Just bring your ass, that's all.

Just bring your ass.

- [Narrator] And for those in the neighborhood, and this family, Joanna's escape has been an inspiration.

- It gave me like a stronger connection with my family 'cause seeing all the stuff that we've been through and the history of it, it makes me wanna be closer with 'em.

- She knows probably everybody on the block.

Everybody loves her.

If you meet her, you'll say, "Ooh, she's a good person."

(chuckles) - She's a person that's not gonna take too much.

She'll let you know.

- I don't think we going to ever stop getting on each other's nerves, but thank the good Lord, we still just as tight as the day Mama brought us here.

- [Narrator] And thanks to Dija Henry's film, even more people know about Rasheeda's Freedom Day.

- Miss JoAnna for a long time didn't tell people what it actually was celebrating.

So I see this circle of freedom.

As she tells her story, she's getting freedom.

As we told the story through film, those who watched it would stand up and tell us that because of this story, they felt free to tell their own story of survival.

- It's a wrap.

(group cheering) - There are parts of it that will probably be painful to me until I die.

Maybe if somebody else hears what I went through, that they would have the courage not to stay as long as I did and put up with as much as I did before they would make a move 'cause I wouldn't want anybody to suffer that.

- [Narrator] For more "Across Indiana" stories, go to wfyi.org/acrossindiana.